Electronic monitoring is commonly employed to monitor the state of a system. From computer system performance to home security to automobile engines, electronic monitoring is increasingly employed to generate alerts if the monitored system fails to perform satisfactorily in some manner. Monitoring can be performed on a system-wide basis or on a component of the system. In the following disclosure, system monitoring is discussed although it should be understood that such discussion applies as well to monitoring an individual component since the difference is subjective. That is, a person may consider an object a system by itself, while another may consider the same object a component in a larger system.
One of the most common ways to continuously monitor a system is by periodic sampling. In periodic sampling, the state of the monitored system is sampled on a periodic schedule. In a typical monitoring situation, some predefined alert threshold is specified. If the value of the most recently obtained sample of data exceeds the predefined alert threshold, an alert is generated. If the most recently obtained sample falls below the threshold, no alert is generated.
This method of alert generation is, however, susceptible to transient conditions. For example, if the state of the monitored system swings rapidly above and below the predefined alert threshold every sampling period or every few sampling periods, alerts are alternately sent and suppressed. If the sampling period is relatively high, e.g., many times per second or per minute, the alert signal simply jitters on and off.